New York, old Poultney Masters, in the apoplectic rages into which the slightest thwart to his will plunged him.  To Enderby’s adroitness the financier (one of whose pet vanities was a profound and wholly baseless faith in himself as a connoisseur of art) owed it that he had not become a laughing-stock through his purchase of a pair of particularly flagrant Murillos, planted for his special behoof by a gang of clever Italian swindlers.  Rumor had it that when Enderby had privately summed up his client’s case for his client’s benefit before his client as referee, in these words:  “And, Mr. Masters, if you act again in these matters without consulting me, you must find another lawyer; I cannot afford fools for clients”—­they had to call in a physician and resort to the ancient expedient of bleeding, to save the great man’s cerebral arteries from bursting.

Toward the public press, Enderby’s attitude was the exact reverse of Horace Vanney’s.  For himself, he unaffectedly disliked and despised publicity; for the interests which he represented, he delegated it to others.  He would rarely be interviewed; his attitude toward the newspapers was consistently repellent.  Consequently his infrequent utterances were treasured as pearls, and given a prominence far above those of the too eager and over-friendly Mr. Vanney, who, incidentally, was his associate on the directorate of the Law Enforcement Society.  The newspapers did not like Willis Enderby any more than he liked them.  But they cherished for him an unrequited respect.

That a reporter, a nobody of yesterday whose association with The Ledger constituted his only claim to any status whatever, should profess indifference to a summons from a man of Enderby’s position, suggested affectation to Mr. Greenough’s suspicions.  Young Mr. Banneker’s head was already swelling, was it?  Very well; in the course of time and his duties, Mr. Greenough would apply suitable remedies.

If Banneker were, indeed, taking a good conceit of himself from the conspicuous position achieved so unexpectedly, the morning papers did nothing to allay it.  Most of them slurred over, as lightly as possible, the fact of his journalistic connection; as in the evening editions, the yacht feature was kept to the fore.  There were two exceptions.  The Ledger itself, in a colorless and straightforward article, frankly identified the hero of the episode, in the introductory sentence, as a member of its city staff, and his host of the yacht as another journalist.  But there was one notable omission about which Banneker determined to ask Tommy Burt as soon as he could see him.  The Patriot, most sensational of the morning issues, splurged wildly under the caption, “Yacht Guest Cleans Out Gang Which Cowed Police.”  The Sphere, in an editorial, demanded a sweeping and honest investigation of the conditions which made life unsafe in the greatest of cities.  The Sphere was always demanding sweeping and honest investigations, and not infrequently getting them.  In Greenough’s opinion this undesirable result was likely to be achieved now.  To Mr. Gordon he said: